{"doi":"10.17615/rdm2-e002","title":"Community-based organization perspectives on participating in state-wide community canvassing program aimed to reduce COVID-19 vaccine disparities in California","abstract":"Background: Inequities in COVID-19 vaccine accessibility and reliable COVID-related information disproportionately affected marginalized racial and ethnic communities in the U.S. The Get Out the Vaccine (GOTVax) program, an innovative statewide government-funded COVID-19 vaccine canvassing program in California, aimed to reduce structural barriers to COVID-19 vaccination in high-risk communities with low vaccination rates. GOTVax consisted of a community-academic-government partnership with 34 local trusted community-based organizations’ (CBOs) to conduct COVID-19 vaccine outreach, education, and vaccine registration. The purpose of this qualitative evaluation study was to explore the barriers and facilitators of using local CBOs to deploy a geographically, racially, and ethnically diverse state-wide COVID-19 vaccine outreach program. Methods: Semi-structured online interviews were conducted with participating GOTVax CBO leaders from November 2021 to January 2022. Transcripts were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Results: Thirty-one of 34 CBOs participated (91% response rate). Identified themes encompassed both facilitators and barriers to program participation. Key facilitators included leveraging trust through recognized entities; promoting empathetic, tailored outreach; and flexibility of milestone-based CBO funding contracts for rapid program implementation. Barriers included navigating community sociopolitical, geographic, and cultural factors; managing canvassers’ safety; desiring metrics for self-evaluation of outreach success; mitigating canvassing technology challenges; and concerns of program infrastructure initially limiting outreach. CBOs problem-solved barriers with academic and government partners. Conclusions: Between May and December 2021, the GOTVax program reached over 2 million California residents and registered over 60,000 residents for COVID-19 vaccination. Public health campaigns may improve benefits from leveraging the expertise of community-trusted CBOs and universities by providing flexible infrastructure and funding, allowing CBOs to seamlessly tailor outreach most applicable to local minoritized communities.","journal":"UNC Libraries","year":2023,"id":410477,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9639,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1128563,"name":"David Santillán","orcid":"0000-0002-9749-0522","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1190476,"name":"SL Jackson","orcid":"0000-0001-8307-8257","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1190815,"name":"Norris K.C.","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1128962,"name":"Nisha Sunku","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1190816,"name":"K. Kim. G","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1190817,"name":"Carson S.L.","orcid":null,"position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1190818,"name":"Brown A.F.","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1128963,"name":"Alana Troutt","orcid":null,"position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1128965,"name":"D. C. Slaughter","orcid":null,"position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1190819,"name":"Mansfield L.N.","orcid":null,"position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1190814,"name":"Vassar S.D.","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:21:35.071397Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}